In this video, I'm going to show you how to make colors pop in Photoshop.
Hi, welcome back to the Photoshop Training Channel.
I'm Jesus Ramirez.
In this video, I'm going to show you how to make colors pop in Photoshop.
You're going to learn five different techniques that are going to show you how to make colors
stand out from one another.
We're going to use techniques ranging from adding saturation and vibrance to a photo
to using complementary colors to make colors stand out.
These techniques should help you tackle any situation that you may come across in your
projects.
Also, keep in mind that the examples that I'm going to show are extreme, but when you're
working with your images, remember to use a subtle approach.
Okay, let's get started.
We're going to work with this image.
As you can see, this image is not highly saturated, and one way of enhancing this image would
be to make the colors pop.
You can, of course, create a new hue and saturation Adjustment Layer and increase the saturation
to make the colors pop.
But this is not one of my favorite methods to make colors pop.
I actually like using the vibrance Adjustment Layer instead.
This Adjustment Layer also has the saturation slider and the vibrance slider.
And I know that you may not know the differences.
What I'll do in this tutorial is give you a brief explanation, but if you are interested
in an in-depth tutorial, then I do have a tutorial on that, and I'll post a link to
it right below in the description.
But anyway, vibrance and saturation both add saturation to an image.
Saturation simply bumps the saturation of all pixels equally.
It just increases saturation.
Vibrance, on the other hand, protects already saturated pixels and skin tones.
So when I increase vibrance, notice that the effect is not as strong as saturation, and
it's more pleasing to the eye.
So, increasing vibrance is what I recommend to start with to make colors pop in a photo.
If I get to a certain point, and I feel that I still need to make the colors pop even further,
I can also add the saturation adjustment to that but keep the saturation adjustment subtle.
Another thing that I can do is target specific colors and increase the saturation of those
colors.
I can do that in one of two ways.
I could use a hue and saturation Adjustment Layer for that and click on this icon.
Then hover over the color that you want to make pop, in this case a dress.
Click, and drag to the right and notice that increases the saturation.
Photoshop automatically selects the color from the dropdown.
In this case, the color that I selected is found in the reds, and you can confirm that
by looking at the gradient right here, right below the properties panel.
I could also click on the leaves, for example, and increase the saturation on those.
And notice that greens were selected, so this is a way of selectively targeting colors to
pop in Photoshop.
The second method is by right-clicking on the layer and converting it into a Smart Object,
then applying the Camera Raw filter from the filter menu.
From here, we also have the vibrance slider and the saturation slider.
We also have access to the clarity slider, which increases contrast and mid-tones, and
that also can help you make your colors pop, and we even have access to the hue saturation
lightness tabs, where we can control those elements with these sliders.
Notice that in saturation, we have access to eight different sliders.
I'm going to press okay for now.
Then, I'm going to enable the hue and saturation Adjustment Layer and show you that here, we
only have access to six different colors.
So the Camera Raw filter gives us access to more colors, and by the way, when you're working
with a Smart Object, you are working non-destructively, which means that you can always come back
and edit the changes.
In a Smart Object, you can double click on the label to bring back that specific filter,
in this case, the Camera Raw filter.
So I can go back into hue, saturation, luminance, and I can adjust those colors.
I can increase the saturation of the oranges and the greens, just as I did before, and
I can control the luminance to make that orange pop even more.
And I can do the same thing with the greens or any other color, of course.
I can press okay, and this is what it looks like without any adjustments and with adjustments.
So these are two different techniques that you can use to make your colors pop in a photo,
and I have three more for you.
The next one is going to be a little different.
We're going to work with this image here, and as you can see, this image is already
highly saturated, but her shirt is not really popping.
And sure, I could create a hue and saturation Adjustment Layer, select yellows and increase
the saturation, and that would increase the saturation of the shirt, but I want to show
you an alternate technique that you can use so that you get different results.
So, I'm going to click on the quick selection tool, and I'm going to click and drag, and
I'm just going to roughly make a selection.
It doesn't have to be perfect.
I'm just worried about the shirt for now.
I'm going to subtract from the selection once I get a good enough selection.
So, at this point, I feel like the selection is good enough.
I want to hold Alt, Option on the Mac, click and drag to subtract from the selection.
So, I'll know I'm subtracting the areas that are not part of the shirt, like her arms,
her fingers, and in a moment, I'm going to go and move up into the shoulder area right
about here and move that away and then this area here.
And again, I'm not going to spend too much time fine-tuning the selection because that's
not the point of the tutorial, but of course, in your images, you might want to spend a
little more time fine-tuning the selections.
But anyway, now that I have this selection active, I'm going to select the Eyedropper
tool, and I'm just going to select any color found on her shirt.
It really doesn't matter which color it is.
So, I have that color selected.
Then, I'm going to create a Solid Color Adjustment Layer, which is going to create a solid color
base on the color that I selected, the color of her shirt.
Then, I can change the blending mode to soft light, and you can see how doing so makes
that color pop.
So, this is another method that you can use to make the colors pop in your image, selecting
soft light as a blending mode or even overlay.
In a lot of cases, overlay is a little too much.
You can, of course, reduce the opacity of the layer if you want to, and as I mentioned
before, spend more time fine-tuning the selection so that it looks more realistic.
We've been using methods that include increasing saturation, contrast or targeting a specific
color to make it stand out more.
What we're going to do now is look at complementary colors and use color theory to make colors
pop in an image.
So, we're going to work with this image here, and you can see that the background is green
and that the foreground is blue, and we want to make the colors pop even more.
The shirt is already highly saturated, so one way of making it pop is by using complementary
colors, and let me show you what I mean by that.
I'm going to open my browser, and I am on Adobe Color CC's website.
You can find it at color.adobe.com, that website there, color.adobe.com.
And this website allows you to select different color theories and move these handles to get
different color swatches.
If you select complementary, you'll get complementary colors.
If I click and drag any one of these points, for example, to the green area because the
background of the image that we were working with was green, you'll see that the opposite
color is red.
When complementary colors are put side by side, they tend to pop, so if we want to make
this shirt pop, you need to change the color to the complementary color of the background
so that it stand out.
So, what I'm going to do is create a hue and saturation Adjustment Layer, click on this
icon, then hold Ctrl, Command on a Mac, click and drag to change the color of the shirt.
And if I change the color to red, you will see that this color pops more than the blue
because now, we're working with complementary colors.
So that is another technique that you can use.
Use complementary colors, put them side by side so that it pops.
Also, I chose to change the color of the shirt, but I could have just as easily changed the
color of the background.
So, if we go back into our color wheel, you will see that the opposite of blue, the complementary
color of blue, is yellow or orange, depending on the blue.
So, we'll be safe with selecting a yellow-orange color.
So, if I go back into Photoshop, I can create a hue and saturation Adjustment Layer and
do the same exact thing.
Hold the Ctrl, Command on the Mac, click and drag to change the color of the background
until we have an orange or yellow color.
So, somewhere about here, maybe increase the saturation a bit and the lightness.
So that's before and after.
So this is a complementary color method that you can use to make colors pop in Photoshop.
And I have a final method for you.
This one is actually very simple.
We're going to work with this image here of this red car, and another way of making colors
pop is by desaturating all colors except for the ones that you want to pop.
So, you can go into the maskers in the dropdown and reduce the saturation of the entire image.
Then, you can select reds and increase the saturation, so now, the reds pop because all
the other colors are muted.
That is one way of doing it.
Another way of doing it is by reducing the saturation, then creating a hue and saturation
Adjustment Layer, which controls the reds and increases saturation to that.
And the reason that you may want to do this is so that you can delete the layer mask and
then use the lasso tool to make a rough selection around the car, create a layer mask.
And now, this Adjustment Layer only takes care of the car.
You will notice that there is some saturation on the ground.
That's easily fixed by doing two things.
First, I can increase the feather, which blurs the edge of the mask if I hold Alt, Option
on the Mac and click on the layer mask thumbnail.
You can see how that edge is blurred as I increase the feather.
I'm going to hold Alt, Option on the Mac again and click on the layer mask thumbnail to bring
that back.
Then, I can use the brush tool and with a soft brush with a hardness of 0%, and you
can see how I'm painting with black on that layer mask to hide those pixels.
And notice that I'm not being very precise, but I'm getting good results.
So that's before and after, and of course, I can control the Opacity of this layer so
that it's not so strong, so before and after.
And, obviously, in this tutorial, I used extreme examples to make it easy to see, but you don't
have to go as extreme as I did in these examples.
Also, as I've been working through this tutorial, you probably noticed that I have a banana
here on my tools bar.
If you want to know what that's about, then look at the description.
I've placed a link there to a video that describes it, and it shows you how to get it.
Let me know in the comments below which of these techniques was new to you or which you
plan to use on your next project.
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on that and subscribe and notification buttons.
Thank you so much for watching, and I will see you at the next tutorial.